With turkey season around the corner, it’s the perfect time to reflect on the things for which we’re grateful. (Christmas/Hanukkah is better spent getting sauced, and New Year’s Eve is the time for making New Year’s resolutions with week-long expiration dates.) For those of us at The New York Observer, it’s hard to choose just what we’re the most thankful for. Is it the Occupy Wall Street movement, for providing us with a rich number of stories to cover for the past two months? Or should we be thanking Josh Schwartz & Co. over at Gossip Girl—which celebrated its 100th episode with a party at Cipriani this weekend—for introducing the nation to our very own “Power Couples” list? (To be completely honest, we’re just grateful for the season finale of How to Make It in America. Santa, if you’re reading this, all we want for Christmas is less of Lake Bell.)
If we had to make a list, at the very top would be Diane von Furstenberg: not only has the designer made it out of one terrible MTV show unscathed, but she managed to release a new scent this month as well. Perhaps Ms. Furstenberg will send Michelle Obama a free bottle of DIANE so the First Lady won’t have to admit to wearing any more copy-cat perfumes.
We’re also bowing our heads this week in deference to John Malkovich’s performance at BAM in The Infernal Comedy. Not since American Psycho have graphic descriptions of prostitute strangling sounded so très chic! We would absolutely kill for an encore performance.
We’re also thankful for The New York Times, whose Auto section has finally come around to recognizing the universally creepy “cargo van on steroids” as this season’s must-have vehicle for Manhattan’s 1 percent. Just make sure you don’t drive your $500,000 stretch-mobile into the suburbs, where your massage chairs and so-called “child’s playroom on wheels” may draw some unwanted attention in local school districts.
And since this is the season to make begrudging gestures of approval to our beloved father figures … we are grateful for our own Mayor Bloomberg for arresting and charging alleged Washington Heights bomber Jose Pimentel before he could do any real damage. As a token of our appreciation, please accept this 24-hour drum circle at your mansion, courtesy of angry Wall Street protesters.
Last but not least, we are taking a moment of silence to honor Kathy Griffin and Modern Family’s Jesse Tyler Ferguson. No, these two aren’t a new power couple; the duo recreated Janet Jackson’s infamous—and barely clad—1994 Rolling Stone cover for Out magazine’s “Out 100” this year. Anderson Cooper, we imagine, elected to stay home to spend the entire night chewing the ice cubes in his vodka club while making voodoo dolls of Mr. Ferguson from reused papier-mâché. Don’t worry, Silver Fox! We’re already sold on the second season of your talk show!
But like any good New York parent, we refuse to pick favorites this holiday season. Instead, we’ll wait until everyone’s good and toasted on turkey tryptophan before we begin pitting Chris Hayes against former anchor Keith Olbermann at the MSNBC round-dinner-table. That’s just the kind of giving, selfless people we are.
